Physical Description

Detail Description

Commentary on the Yalkut Shimoni and collected derashot entitled Shemen Sason by R. Abraham Abele Gombiner, author of Magen Avraham on the Shulhan Arukh Orah Hayyim. There is a woodcut frontpiece on the title page and on the verso is a large version of the famed Foa printer’s mark, consisting of a palm tree with a lion rampant on each side and affixed to the tree a Magen David within a cartouche, and about it the verse, “The righteous flourish like the palm tree” (Psalms 92:13). There are several approbations from Italian rabbis and a preface from the editor, Naftali Zevi called Hirsch ben Jeremiah Berlin. This is followed by Shemen Sason (1a-9b), derashot on the weekly parsha from Bereishit through Hayyei Sarah by R. Gombiner. The commentary on Yalkut Shimoni begins on 10a. The final page (96b) is in Latin, being the privileges to print granted to Benjamin Polacco, who brought Zayit Ra’anan to press. These are in addition to the normal privilege to print found on the title page. Zayit Ra’anan is, since 1876, published in abridged form in all editions of the Yalkut Shimoni. This edition is complete and unabridged.

R. Abraham Abele ben Hayyim Ha-Levi Gombiner (c. 1637–1683), was one of the leading talmudists and halakhic authorities in Europe in the seventeenth century. He was born in Gombin, Poland; his parents were murdered by Cossacks during the Chmielnicki massacres of 1648. In 1655 he went to Lithuania, where he studied with his relative, R. Jacob Isaac Gombiner and afterwards to Kalisz, where R. Gombiner was appointed head of the yeshivah and dayyan of the bet din. His Magen Avraham on the Shulhan Arukh Orah Hayyim is an essential and authoritative work. R. Gombiner was also the author of Tosefta of Nezikin, published by his grandson under the title Magen Avraham at the end of the Lehem ha-Panim (Amsterdam, 1732) of his son-in-law, Moses Jekuthiel Kaufmann. He also wrote a commentary on the Shulhan Arukh, Even ha-Ezer, with a special essay on the correct spelling of Jewish names in official documents, and scholia to the treatises Zevahim and Menahot. Neither of these works is now extant.